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February 26, 2015

Changes in Blogger's Adult Content Policy

by Donna Huber
If you are using Blogger as your blogging platform and post adult content - Romance/Erotica authors and reviewers - you may find your blog set to private come March 23. We have seen in the past romance/erotica author blogs disappearing. Now Blogger is updating its adult content policy officially to prohibit explicit content.

According to Blogger's announcement, "as of March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and videos that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity..."

The announcement goes on to state, "we’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit. For example, in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts."

Most romance/erotica authors and reviewers that I know have their blog listed as 'adult', but will that be enough for Blogger?

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that book covers with nudity or sexually explicit images will be allowed because of its artistic nature. So if the only images you are using on your blog are book covers and your blog is marked 'adult', then things will continue as normal for you. Book trailers will probably be okay, too as long as they clearly support the book and are not just sexually explicit to be sexually explicit.

You may be getting into a gray area with images that inspired your characters. This practice has always been risky do to copyright issues and lack of permission to use a person's image. I would recommend if you are currently doing this (regardless of the sexual nature of the image) to discontinue this practice for legal issues it could cause.

If you think your blog may run up against this policy, there are a few options.

Remove the images

Mark your blog as private (if your blog does violate the policy, Blogger will automatically set your blog to private on March 23). Private blogs can only be viewed by the owner, admins, and those the owner shares the blog with.

Shut down your Blogger blog. It is relatively easy to make a backup of your blog.

Look into a self-hosted WordPress blog, though I suspect they have some rules on sexually explicit content as well.

Wait and see.

Blogger has stated that it will not delete any content or blogs that are established, they will just set the blog to private. Any blog that is started after March 23 may be removed if it violates the policy.

3
comments:

Yeah I read about this yesterday. It's sad that they're doing this because it'll effect many bloggers even if it's on private, especially for authors in the romance genre and bloggers in the LBGT community. But many bloggers who, like me enjoy Man Candy Monday posts are going to feel sad. I love those posts of sexy men with barely enough on and enjoy sharing my own pictures of sexy men. But blogger has a huge blogging community that I can't believe they're putting this up.

Our freedom of speech is restricted now, and blogging is supposed to be a way out for us yo share and enjoy sharing.

As a free platform Blogger can set it's policies to be whatever they want it to be. It is not restricting your right to free speech, at least no more than a newspaper not running a letter to the editor. One of the reason I suggested checking out a self-hosted wordpress blog is then you are in control. I understand where Blogger is coming from with trying to limit the amount of pornography on their service, so much pornography is tied to illegal activity - child exploitation, human trafficking, etc.